to repudiate. Was he a machiavellian?' 'No, not at all.' Was he not
influenced by Machiavelli to some degree?' 'To none whatever.'

What lies behind the sinister reputation Machiavelli has acquired? Is it
really deserved? What views about politics and political morality does
he actually put forward in his major works? These are the questions I
hope to answer in the course of this book. I shall argue that, in order to
understand Machiavelli's doctrines, we need to begin by recovering the
problems he evidently saw himself confronting in The Prince, the
Discourses, and his other works of political thought. To attain this
perspective, we need in turn to reconstruct the context in which these
works were originally composed--the intellectual context of classical
and Renaissance philosophy, as well as the political context of Italian
city-state life at the start of the sixteenth century. Once we restore
Machiavelli to the world in which his ideas were initially formed, we
can begin to appreciate the extraordinary originality of his attack on
the prevailing moral assumptions of his age. And once we grasp the
implications of his own moral outlook, we can readily see why his
name is still so often invoked whenever the issues of political power
and leadership are discussed.

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